Нора Робертс - Blue Dahlia

And she was going back to her plants. They generally gave her less trouble than people.

"Roz? I know I can be an awful pain in the ass, but I really do want to help you grow your business."

"I figured out both those things already."

Alone, Stella sulked for a minute. Then she got her bucket and climbed up the ladder again. The unscheduled meeting had thrown her off schedule.

* * *

"I don't like her." Logan sat in Roz's parlor with a beer in one hand and a boatload of resentment in the other. "She's bossy, rigid, smug, and shrill." At Roz's raised brows, he shrugged. "Okay, not shrill—so far—but I stand by the rest."

"I do like her. I like her energy and her enthusiasm. And I need someone to handle the details, Logan.

I've outgrown myself. I'm just asking that the two of you try to meet somewhere in the middle of things."

"I don't think she has any middle. She's extreme. I don't trust extreme women."

"You trust me."

He brooded into his beer. That was true enough. If he hadn't trusted Roz, he wouldn't have come to

work for her, no matter what salary and perks she'd dangled under his nose. "She's going to have us

filling out forms in triplicate and documenting how many inches we prune off a damn bush."

"I don't think it'll come to that." Roz propped her feet comfortably on the coffee table and sipped her

own beer.

"If you had to go and hire some sort of manager, Roz, why the hell didn't you hire local? Get somebody in who understands how things work around here."

"Because I didn't want a local. I wanted her. When she comes down, we're going to have a nice civilized drink followed by a nice civilized meal. I don't care if the two of you don't like each other, but you will learn how to get along."

"You're the boss."

"That's a fact." She gave him a companionable pat on the thigh. "Harper's coming over, too. I browbeat him into it."

Logan brooded a minute longer. "You really like her?"

"I really do. And I've missed the company of women. Women who aren't silly and annoying, anyway. She's neither. She had a tough break, Logan, losing her man at such a young age. I know what that's

like. She hasn't broken under it, or gone brittle. So yes, I like her."

"Then I'll tolerate her, but only for you."

"Sweet talker." With a laugh, Roz leaned over to kiss his cheek.

"Only because I'm crazy about you."

Stella came to the door in time to see Logan take Roz's hand in his, and thought, Oh, shit.

She'd gone head-to-head, argued with, insulted, and complained about her boss's lover.

With a sick dread in her stomach, she nudged her boys forward. She stepped inside, plastered on a smile. "Hope we're not late," she said cheerily. "There was a small homework crisis. Hello, Mr. Kitridge. I'd

like you to meet my sons. This is Gavin, and this is Luke."

"How's it going?" They looked like normal kids to him rather than the pod-children he'd expected someone like Stella to produce.

"I have a loose tooth," Luke told him.

"Yeah? Let's have a look, then." Logan set down his beer to take a serious study of the tooth Luke wiggled with his tongue. "Cool. You know, I've got me some pliers in my toolbox. One yank and we'd have that out of there."

At the small horrified sound from behind him, Logan turned to smile thinly at Stella.

"Mr. Kitridge is just joking," Stella told a fascinated Luke. "Your tooth will come out when it's ready."

"When it does, the Tooth Fairy comes, and I get a buck."

Logan pursed his lips. "A buck, huh? Good deal."

"It makes blood when it comes out, but I'm not scared."

"Miss Roz? Can we go see David in the kitchen?" Gavin shot a look at his mother. "Mom said we had

to ask you."

"Sure. You go right on."

"No sweets," Stella called out as they dashed out.

"Logan, why don't you pour Stella a glass of wine?"

"I'll get it. Don't get up," Stella told him.

He didn't look quite as much like an overbearing jerk, she decided. He cleaned up well enough, and

she could see why Roz was attracted. If you went for the ubervirile sort.

"Did you say Harper was coming?" Stella asked her.

"He'll be along." Roz gestured with her beer. "Let's see if we can all play nice. Let's get this business out of the way so we can have an enjoyable meal without ruining our digestion. Stella's in charge of sales

and production, of managing the day-to-day business. She and I will, for now anyway, share personnel management while Harper and I head up propagation."

She sipped her beer, waited, though she knew her own power and didn't expect an interruption. "Logan leads the landscaping design, both on- and off-site. As such, he has first choice of stock and is authorized to put in for special orders, or arrange trades or purchases or rentals of necessary equipment, material or specimens for outside designs. The changes Stella has already implemented or proposed—and which

have been approved by me—will stay or be put in place. Until such time as I decide they don't work.

Or if I just don't like them. Clear so far?"

"Perfectly," Stella said coolly.

Logan shrugged.

"Which means you'll cooperate with each other, do what's necessary to work together in such a way for both of you to function in the areas you oversee. I built In the Garden from the ground up, and I can run it myself if I have to. But I don't choose to. I choose to have the two of you, and Harper, shoulder the responsibilities you've been given. Squabble all you want. I don't mind squabbles. But get the job done."

She finished off her beer. "Questions? Comments?" After a beat of silence, she rose. "Well, then, let's eat."

It was, all things considered, a pleasant evening. Neither of her kids threw any food or made audible gagging noises. Always a plus, in Stella's book. Conversation was polite, even lively—particularly when the boys learned Logan's first name—the same name used by the X-Men's Wolverine.

It was instant hero status, given polish when it was discovered that Logan shared Gavin's obsession

with comic books.

The fact that Logan seemed more interested in talking to her sons than her was probably another plus.

"If, you know, the Hulk and Spider-Man ever got into a fight, I think Spider-Man would win."

Logan nodded as he cut into rare roast beef. "Because Spider-Man's quicker, and more agile. But if the Hulk ever caught him, Spidey'd be toast."

Gavin speared a tiny new potato, then held it aloft on his fork like a severed head on a pike. "If he was under the influence of some evil guy, like . . ."

"Maybe Mr. Hyde."

"Yeah! Mr. Hyde, then the Hulk could be forced to go after Spider-Man. But I still think Spidey would win."

"That's why he's amazing," Logan agreed, "and the Hulk's incredible. It takes more than muscle to battle evil."

"Yeah, you gotta be smart and brave and stuff."

"Peter Parker's the smartest." Luke emulated his brother with the potato head.

"Bruce Banner's pretty smart, too." Since it made the kids laugh, Harper hoisted a potato, wagged it.

"He always manages to get new clothes after he reverts from Hulk form."

"If he was really smart," Harper commented, "he'd figure out a way to make his clothes stretch and expand."

"You scientists," Logan said with a grin for Harper. "Never thinking about the mundane."

"Is the Mundane a supervillain?" Luke wanted to know.

"It means the ordinary," Stella told him. "As in, it's more mundane to eat your potatoes than to play with them, but that's the polite thing to do at the table."

"Oh." Luke smiled at her, an expression somewhere between sweet and wicked, and chomped the potato off the fork. "Okay." After the meal, she used the excuse of the boys' bedtime to retreat upstairs. There were baths to deal with, the usual thousand questions to answer, and all that end-of-day energy to burn off, which included one or both of them running around mostly naked.

Then came her favorite time, when she drew a chair between their beds and read to them while Parker began to snore at her feet. The current pick was Mystic Horse, and when she closed the book, she got

the expected moans and pleas for just a little more.

'Tomorrow, because now I'm afraid it's time for sloppy kisses."

"Not sloppy kisses." Gavin rolled onto his belly to bury his face in the pillow. "Not that!"

"Yes, and you must succumb." She covered the back of his head, the base of his neck with kisses while he giggled.

"And now, for my second victim." She turned to Luke and rubbed her hands together.

"Wait, wait!" He threw out his hand to ward off the attack. "Do you think my tooth will fall out tomorrow?"

"Let's have another look." She sat on the side of his bed, studying soberly as he wiggled the tooth with

his tongue. "I think it just might."

"Can I have a horse?"

"It won't fit under your pillow." When he laughed, she kissed his forehead, his cheeks, and his sweet, sweet mouth.

Rising, she switched off the lamp, leaving them in the glow of the night-light. "Only fun dreams allowed."

"I'm gonna dream I get a horse, because dreams come true sometimes."

"Yes, they do. 'Night now."

She walked back to her room, heard the whispers from bed to bed that were also part of the bedtime ritual.

It had become their ritual, over the last two years. Just the three of them at nighttime, where they had once been four. But it was solid now, and good, she thought, as a few giggles punctuated the whispers.

Somewhere along the line she'd stopped aching every night, every morning, for what had been. And

she'd come to treasure what was.

She glanced at her laptop, thought about the work she'd earmarked for the evening. Instead, she went to the terrace doors.

It was still too cool to sit out, but she wanted the air, and the quiet, and the night.

Imagine, just imagine, she was standing outside at night in January. And not freezing. Though the forecasters were calling for more rain, the sky was star-studded and graced with a sliver of moon. In

that dim light she could see a camellia in bloom. Flowers in winter—now that was something to add to

the plus pile about moving south.

She hugged her elbows and thought of spring, when the air would be warm and garden-scented.

She wanted to be here in the spring, to see it, to be part of the awakening. She wanted to keep her job. She hadn't realized how much she wanted to keep it until Roz's firm, no-nonsense sit-down before dinner.

Less than two weeks, and she was already caught up. Maybe too much caught, she admitted. That was always a problem. Whatever she began, she needed to finish. Stella's religion, her mother called it.

But this was more. She was emotional about the place. A mistake, she knew. She was half in love with the nursery, and with her own vision of how it could be. She wanted to see tables alive with color and green, cascading flowers spilling from hanging baskets that would drop down along the aisles to make arbors. She wanted to see customers browsing and buying, filling the wagons and flatbeds with containers.

And, of course, there was that part of her that wanted to go along with each one of them and show them exactly how everything should be planted. But she could control that.

She could admit she also wanted to see the filing system in place, and the spreadsheets, the weekly inventory logs.

And whether he liked it or not, she intended to visit some of Logan's jobs. To get a feel for that end of the business.

That was supposing he didn't talk Roz into firing her.

He'd gotten slapped back, too, Stella admitted. But he had home-field advantage.

In any case, she wasn't going to be able to work, or relax, or think about anything else until she'd straightened things out.

She would go downstairs, on the pretext of making a cup of tea. If his truck was gone, she'd try to have

a minute with Roz.

It was quiet, and she had a sudden sinking feeling that they'd gone up to bed. She didn't want that picture in her head. Tiptoeing into the front parlor, she peeked out the window. Though she didn't see his truck, it occurred to her she didn't know where he'd parked, or what he'd driven in the first place.

She'd leave it for morning. That was best. In the morning, she would ask for a short meeting with Roz and get everything back in place. Better to sleep on it, to plan exactly what to say and how to say it.